chapter 4

a google of apples a day
the art of anticipation in the modern world of customer service

to bind customers to you through service requires what I call “The Art of Anticipation.” Most any business, some of the time, can provide satisfactory customer service. And, with the help of the four-step system laid out in Chapter 2 (perfect product, caring delivery, timeliness, and effective problem resolution), it’s a straightforward process to learn to provide it consistently.

But anticipatory customer service is a different ball game, even if it’s played in the same stadium. This is where the magic happens, where you bind customers to you and create fierce loyalty and true brand equity.

Think about it this way: Nobody ever shouts out, “Yeehaw—I just had an incredibly satisfactory customer service experience.”¹ But if your service truly anticipates your customers’ desires and wishes, your customers will be well on their way to feeling they can’t, or certainly don’t want to, live without you.

This key differentiator has historical validation. Starting with the planning meetings where the original team created the Ritz-Carlton brand and ethos that are now so widely emulated, the Ritz-Carlton Credo has included the phrase “The Ritz-Carlton experience … fulfills even the unexpressed wishes and needs of our guests” [emphasis mine]. And every Ritz-Carlton employee since that time knows this statement by heart.

Now, let’s jump forward in time from the founding of the Ritz and see what this looks like in the high-tech world, focusing primarily on the Apple customer experience. Homing in on one extraordinary company, to my mind, is a more revealing way to explore anticipatory service than rushing through a cafeteria line of superficially examined² examples. Why Apple? It’s the current leader, by a wide margin, in high-tech customer service and experience and I have my years of involvement in Apple-related companies that help me provide a “then and now” perspective.

Apple’s focus, of course, is consumer technology, spanning PCs (Macintosh laptops and desktops), “post-PCs” (iPad tablet computers), telecommunications (the iPhone), multimedia entertainment (iTunes, the iPod, Apple TV), and more—most of which we seem to be using simultaneously in the Solomon household. (An illustration involving my six-year-old son last spring shows the central position of Apple in the Solomon universe. My son’s school has a weekly Silent Meeting, where these tiny kids are expected to remain silent until someone is “spiritually moved” to speak. My first-grader told me he had been moved to speak at Meeting, so I drew him out about it: “Oh, honey, what did you share at Silent Meeting this week?” His proud answer: “I stood up and told them, ‘The iPad 2 will be available for purchase online, Thursday night at midnight.’”)

the apple store experience

When most people think about what differentiates Apple’s customer service from its competitors’, they think about the Apple Stores, those uniquely designed storefronts that have revolutionized technology retailing. So let’s start our review of Apple there.

Anticipatory service at the Apple Store can begin for customers even before they arrive in the flesh. With the Apple Store app, Apple allows a customer to schedule an appointment so the staff will be ready to receive you properly when you arrive. (More on this in the section “A Proper Greeting at Apple” that follows) Whether or not you make use of this option, the in-store anticipatory customer service starts almost immediately upon entering. You’re greeted promptly and heartily by a distinctively dressed and reasonably articulate individual: a technologically knowledgeable Apple representative who has the requisite passion for both computing and customer service excellence. This employee predominantly listens to you, figures out what you’re there for, and personally guides you in the right direction. This type of close listening is a key to anticipating a customer’s needs and desires, as I’ll argue in Chapter 13. Incidentally, if you’re there to pilfer, not purchase (I know you’re not, but it happens), this employee will likely pick up on that as well; this kind of prescreening makes theft in Apple Stores less likely. (Unfortunately, the streamlined design and unusually open layout of Apple Stores does make them appealing for break-ins and holdups, although these hapless criminals tend to get nothing for their efforts, since Apple can disable stolen devices through its tracking software.)

Asked such probing follow-up questions as you’re moved closer to your actual purchase, you feel heard, known, and understood. The relationship may just have started, but it seems solid and sincere, centered on you the customer, a source of comfort rather than technology-induced intimidation.

One of the more paradoxical aspects of the Apple Store experience is when this close listening leads to a store employee asking if a different item—even a less expensive one—might actually fit you better than the one you originally had in mind.³ But this doesn’t harm Apple’s bottom line. Ultimately this counterintuitive approach is highly profitable. Imagine the extent to which product returns are reduced when competent customer service reps—true professionals—help you, the customer, by diplomatically challenging your preconceived, or dimly conceived, purchasing methodology until it truly matches your specific needs. And how add-on sales are increased when the level of trust is this high. Extended warrantees no longer feel like obvious rip-off bait but like solid investments. Additional “one to one” training for $99? Sign me up! The dreaded “suggestive selling”? Now it’s hardly dreaded; it’s even welcome—because the suggestions are anticipatory, they predict what you want before you would know it yourself. When you finally go home, the marketing emails you receive from Apple will be for the kinds of products and services you are actually interested in, because your personal preferences are updated while you visit.⁴

from cradle to credit card

Now, it’s time to pay—and to endure the necessary evil of the exit experience. Ah, but it’s not so evil at the Apple Store. The checkout comes to you: Your new retail friend brings a mobile credit card reader to where you are standing and completes the transaction on the spot. Thus, the final impression you have is as warm as the first: You’re cared for every step of the way, from cradle to credit card.

The Apple Store, however, isn’t the end of the story for customer anticipation at Apple. In fact, it’s just the beginning—the first bite, if you will. What’s remarkable about Apple is that it focuses on the customer experience throughout its operation, attempting to anticipate at every step what a customer will want, whether that puts demands on a call center rep, product designer, packaging expert, or computer programmer. This is sometimes missed by analysts who look at Apple’s products, or its stores, but overlook the arc that connects them. The arc that connects them is a commitment to an ethos of anticipation, or to phrase it the way the late Steve Jobs would, a commitment to first consider the desired customer experience and have all technological decisions follow from there. Let’s look now at how this figures into the computer upgrade experience, not often considered a likely place to find an anticipatory customer experience.

a tale of two installs

Considering I’ve had a continual string of personal computers since I was a teenager, you’d think that pulling a new Macintosh computer out of its shipping crate and getting it up and running would be second nature to me. As easy as falling off a logarithm.

Well, you’d be right … or you’d be wrong. It all depends on what decade the install took place.

now …

Last month I ordered a new Macintosh laptop to replace its older but still functioning predecessor. Why? The new model has a faster hard drive, it’s lighter, and it’s notably smaller overall, thus less likely to earn me the hairy eyeball from my airplane seatmates, whose tray tables I’ll no longer encroach upon. So I had some attractive reasons to trade up within the Macintosh product line. And augmenting these reasons was an unspoken, compelling feature that made the decision to buy a new machine much easier: I knew it would be a piece of cake to transfer the data from my old computer and get it up and running on the new one.

First, the box lands on my porch, essentially unmarked—so much the better for its chances of actually reaching me without being illicitly diverted en route. Inside the unmarked outer box is the lovely current-generation Apple packaging, extremely easy to open, with the enclosed computer held lightly in place by perfectly sized recycled cardboard inserts.

After I turn on my new prize and dismiss an initial prompt or two, the screen asks, “Do you already have a Mac?” Answering yes, I’m offered the option of transferring the contents of my existing laptop to this new one, either directly from my old machine, which is currently upstairs and physically a bit unwieldy to work from, or from an easy-to-use, Apple-formatted backup (called a Time Machine). Bingo! I have one of those Time Machines, backed up just an hour earlier, in fact. My old laptop can stay ensconced for now in its pile of mess and cables, and I’ll plug this tiny external-drive backup right into the new machine.

That is nearly all there is to it. All my transferred applications function perfectly—the serial numbers have been retained; there are no odd forward-incompatibility problems—so I’m up and running immediately. Everything is as it was on the old machine, except now it’s a little bit better, with a richer-looking screen that features more pixels and a faster refresh rate, a quicker response to my every keystroke, and a better “feel” in trackpad gesture response.

As icing, a software update comes up on the screen, alerting me to the operating system changes that have occurred since my new machine left Guangdong Province in China on its way to me a few days ago. Updates that make the perfect more perfect.

As I open my email inbox, I see there are invitations from Apple, not to buy extraneous dreck but to learn how to operate my machine better. I’m offered three options here: a video tutorial, an opportunity to make an appointment at the Apple store for face-to-face instruction, or if I’d prefer to do some old-fashioned reading on my own, I’m given the appropriate links to the material.

Easy as Apple pie. In fact, it’s so seamless and easy that it’s deceptively unremarkable.

Unless you have memories of the way it used to be.

… and then

It’s 1990 or 1995. The exact year doesn’t matter, because it‘s all the same—more or less. At least it felt the same to me, regardless of what incremental improvements may have been going on below the surface.

My new Macintosh desktop computer arrives from Apple, enormous and impressive looking. It’s in a huge “Steal me now!” box with a bold photograph of the contents on the sides of it. (And, in fact, my order has been delayed because the first computer Apple tried to send me apparently “fell off a truck” and was never seen again.)

Why have I ordered this computer? Out of desperation, really, because my existing Macintosh is crashing more than three times a day, every day. I’m a hoping a new one will work better. I know at least it will be faster—it has a new processor—so the times between the crashes will be more productive.

I open the box, or try to. It pretty much requires a crowbar to do this without ripping the box to shreds due to the industrial-strength staples binding it together, and it takes a lot of finesse to avoid spreading fine Styrofoam bits all over the carpet. Ultimately, with some effort, I come face to face with my new adversary. The first question is whether the machine will even turn on. This sounds like an absurd concern to have about a new product; however, sometimes these computers leave the plant with software that will be discovered to be fatally flawed before the machine even reaches its destination. When that happens, you need to order, at your own initiative, a new set of startup disks to be shipped from Apple to get things working.

For the purposes of this reminiscence, let’s assume my newly arrived machine turns on at the first try and I get that nice, smiling Apple face and the powerful orchestral cord that provides at least the faint hope that all is well. But here’s the rub: I have no reason to trust the computer will still work for me after I get the other documents, applications, and extensions successfully transferred from my existing computer to this new one.

And this is the part I most dread. Even though Apple was, even back in the 1990s, one of the industry’s more diligent companies at trying to ensure that software and hardware play well together, it’s inevitably a struggle.

First, I have to decide for myself what software I even dare bring over from my old computer. Much of the software that helped me streamline my work on my prior machine is almost certain not to work on the new one—and worse, attempting to install these programs is likely to ensure this new computer fails to even reboot the next time I try it.

In any event, I have to face an absurd hurdle: The new computer doesn’t believe me yet that I own this software! So, if I choose to transfer over my existing software applications—thousands of dollars worth of applications—it means a trip to the closet where the original serial numbers and owner’s codes are stored. I’m reduced to painstakingly entering these codes, some of them more than fifteen characters long, with dozens of chances to mis-enter them. (Is that a zero or the letter O? Is that a lowercase i or a numeral one?) Then, for the verifying field in the re-registration process, I need to remember the phone number I used when I initially registered, as well as, sometimes, my historically accurate address. (Three years ago, did I use my business or home address when I registered? Or maybe my old P.O. box?)

Now I can start to find out what software works with the new machine, what doesn’t, and—sometimes worst of all—what sorta, kinda works, until it doesn’t. It’s hard to exaggerate the amount of tension the process can involve; these applications and documents include my professional work—my bookkeeping, bank account records, and more. If I can’t get the applications to work on the new machine, I’ll have to go back to using my old, slower, crashing-three-times-a-day machine. Or I’ll be forced to painstakingly export my data to another program that works with this new but exceedingly particular computer.

Throughout the process, there’s no centralized help. No prompts on the screen to warn me if my software is out of date or if what I’m doing is wrong. There’s certainly no hope that if I call Apple on the phone they’ll be able to help me in a timely fashion. In fact, they probably won’t be able to help me at all, thanks to all the third-party intellectual property that is involved, even though it was Apple’s technological “improvements” that feel to me, the customer, like the cause of the new problems.

This Apple of the early nineties is by no means worse than other companies; in fact, it is in many ways considerably better—but it has a long, long way to go. And by four in the morning, coffee-jittered out, I’m ready to chuck the whole thing for the old reliable technology of pen and paper, on a literal hardwood desktop—not the virtual desktop of a computer.

bringing it all back home

There’s great disparity between the customer experiences in the two scenarios I’ve just described, which is surprising since they emanate from the same company. Fortunately for Apple and its customers, the positive experience of masterful customer service—from safe delivery of the product to intelligent packaging to the seamless and transparent transfer of data and applications, not to mention the design enhancement and beauty of the machine—is the “after” scenario in this tale of two installs. So what exactly is different—what is the difference, in other words, that makes all the difference?

What Apple, present-day version, has painstakingly created over the course of years of improvement looks and feels like it comes from an entirely new world. It’s elevated the dreaded process of computer upgrade to an intuitive level. Most important, it’s made the process customer-centric through the anticipation of potential pitfalls and hazards that the customer might encounter and then built in road signs to guide the customer around those potential problems, often invisibly and always nearly effortlessly.

If you’re thinking this is a product upgrade more than a customer service upgrade, you have a point. But there’s nearly nothing sold today that doesn’t combine service and product, and technology can’t be left to the technologists if you want to satisfy customers. Today, great companies like Apple understand that the devices they offer are both “product” and “service” simultaneously, and that they need to build anticipation into the product itself, as well as into how it’s sold and serviced.

Current-day Apple has created a remarkable tech-based version of our archetype of customer service excellence: an experience that’s analogous to what a child might encounter living in a safe and secure home with loving, responsible, responsive parents. The software has been pre-checked to verify that it’s the latest version—without your prompting. Apple knows this may not be your first Mac and therefore offers to transfer your personal data and preferences, without prompting. And when all is done, Apple knows you’re likely to want help using your new purchase and invites you in various ways, including an invitation to visit its friendly stores, to come and see the light, rather than sit in the dark and suffer.

“attaching” yourself to customers: gmail and more

Apple, of course, isn’t the only company offering a technologically enhanced anticipatory customer experience, although Apple is one of the only ones that nails it in retail and in product design. Let’s quickly run through a few more anticipatory tech phenomena. For an example that for many of us is as close as our fingers, consider Google’s Gmail, which is stunningly anticipatory in its features, especially the intuitive features that have been introduced in the years since the original, more skeletal version was launched.⁶ Try typing the word “attachment” somewhere in an email you’re composing in Gmail. If you haven’t actually attached a document, you get the following concerned message, sounding like something you might receive from a protective parent or mentor:

Did you mean to attach files?

(You wrote: “see attachment” in your message, but there are no
files attached. Send anyway?)

There’s also Gmail’s “Don’t Forget Bob” and “Got the Wrong Bob?” features. The first of these automatic watchdogs (“Don’t Forget Bob”) reminds you if you’ve forgotten someone whom you usually copy:

In addition to Dasher <[email protected]>_and Dancer
<[email protected]>:

Also include Rudolph <rednose@northpole.cold>?

The second of these features (“Got the Wrong Bob?”) will notice when you’ve cc’d someone who seems out of whack with your other recipients and will help you replace the “wrong Bob” with the right one:

Did you mean [email protected] instead of
[email protected]?

Perhaps Gmail’s anticipatory pièce de résistance, at least for certain segments of the populace, is its “Mail Goggles” feature. This feature anticipates your inability to (soberly) send email at certain hours of the night, offering tiered math quizzes that lock up your email-sending capability until you’re sober enough to get your calculations right. Clearly a Google engineer was able to channel the thinking of a snock-ered customer.

And nothing tops Netflix for what I call algorithm-based customer anticipation (which is even more striking in contrast to the company’s periodic, publicized customer-service gaffes in other areas). Netflix’s brilliant, mysterious formula for predicting the movie I next want to watch borders on clairvoyance. Netflix seems to be able to identify movies I’ll enjoy with far more accuracy than my family, my friends, or professional critics ever can. This ability is based on whatever Netflix has in its magic box, ranging from my zip code to, of course, the movies I have enjoyed in the past.

It’s important to realize that customers generally enjoy and are starting more and more to expect this level of anticipation in technology-driven service. The number of clicks they expect to invest before being presented with an ideal solution diminishes every month. And customer willingness for you to allow them to make—and pay for—their own mistakes is on the verge of extinction in a world where, should you somehow mistakenly try to purchase a duplicate Kindle title online, Amazon.com (another technologically anticipatory company) warns you that you’ve already purchased that title and protects you from giving it money in error! Your customer service technology and your technology-driven service processes need to be designed and operated in a manner that doesn’t simply respond to your customers but actively protects them from mistakes on both your parts. Your customer service applications and procedures should act as if they’re standing by the side of the specific customer you’re working with, anticipating what that customer wants or needs next.

Technology-based though they are, the Apple, Google, and Netflix experiences work only to the extent that these companies consider what the service experience looks like from the point of view of the customer. This ability to be customer focused is largely dependent on the culture you create and the people you hire, which is where we go next.

“and your point is?”

Most any business, at least some of the time, can provide satisfactory customer service. And, by employing the four-piece framework of

1. a perfect product or service

2. delivered in a caring, friendly manner

3. on time, with

4. the backing of an effective problem-resolution process

you can even provide this on a consistent basis. But anticipatory customer service is a whole different ball game. This is how you create fierce customer loyalty—and true brand equity.

If your service truly anticipates customers’ desires and wishes, it will put customers well on their way to feeling that they can’t live without you.

Consider how Apple has elevated both the retail experience and the once-dreaded process of upgrading your computer to an intuitive level. It’s made the process customer friendly through the anticipation of potential pitfalls a customer might encounter and then building road signs into the upgrade process that guide the customer around those potential problems—often invisibly and always nearly effortlessly.

If you want to satisfy customers, the technology can’t be left to the technologists. Today, great companies like Apple understand that they offer both “product” and “service” simultaneously, and that in order to achieve maximum customer service satisfaction, they need to build anticipatory customer service into the product itself.

Customers generally enjoy, and more and more expect, a certain level of anticipation in technology-driven service. The number of clicks they expect to invest before being presented with the ideal solution diminishes every month. And their willingness to let you allow them to make—and pay for—mistakes is on the verge of extinction.